120 LANDSCAPE AND LITERATURE 



wilds few lowlanders would venture without the most 

 urgent reasons. Even after military roads had been 

 made across it, the accommodation for travellers was 

 still generally of the most wretched kind. Those who 

 had occasion to traverse it gave such an account of 

 their experiences as one would hardly now expect to 

 receive from the heart of Africa. 1 The poet Gray 

 during his visit to Scotland in the year 1765, made 

 a brief excursion into the Perthshire Highlands, and, 

 in spite of the discomforts of travel at that time, came 

 away with a vivid impression of the grandeur and 

 beauty of the scenery. But the only record that 

 remains of this impression is to be found in a few 

 sentences in his letters. 2 



1 In Burt's Letters, which give so graphic a picture of the conditioi 

 of the Highlands of Scotland between the two risings of 1715 and 

 1745, the general impression made at that time on the mind of 

 an intelligent stranger by the scenery of the region may be gathered 

 from the following quotations : * I shall soon conclude this descrip- 

 tion of the outward appearance of the mountains, which I am 

 already tired of, as a disagreeable subject. . . . There is not much 

 variety, but gloomy spaces, different rocks, heath, and high and 

 low, . . . the whole of a dismal gloomy brown drawing upon a 

 dirty purple ; and most of all disagreeable when the heath is in 

 bloom. But of all the views, I think the most horrid is, to look 

 at the hills from east to west, or vice versa ; for then the eye 

 penetrates far among them, and sees more particularly their stupend- 

 ous bulk, frightful irregularity, and horrid gloom, made yet more 

 sombrous by the shades and faint reflections they communicate one 

 to another.' Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland to his 

 Friend in London. Fifth edit., vol. i. p. 285. 



2 In writing to Mason he says : < I am returned from Scotland 

 charmed with my expedition : it is of the Highlands I speak ; the 

 Lowlands are worth seeing once, but the mountains are ecstatic, 

 and ought to be visited in pilgrimage once a year. None but those 



